Has anyone made homemade fleece bedding?

[Freela]

My daughter is good with the sewing machine and I'm hoping to move over to fleece bedding to save some money... I'm thinking she could just sew me some fleece cage liners for the pigs. But the ready-made ones I use have a water-resistant bottom lining and a middle absorbent layer and I like those features, I'm not sure how I could replicate that in a homemade cage liner. Any ideas of what to look for at the fabric store?

 

[superka]

Hello fellow cunuck! I have, you use two layers of fleece with a layer of uhaul blankets in the middle as an absorbent layer. If you want you can lay down pee pads under the fleece. (if you clean the fleeces often you rarely need to actually change all the pee pads. usually just the one where their hide is.) I make two fleeces per cage so i can rotate them with the wash. Its super easy honestly if your daughter likes to sow she probably has 100X the skill I have.... I'm a dude who uses it to mend close cause i dont like throwing stuff out and small diy things like fleece beddings. its function over aesthetics for me...

this is one i made for my buddies rabbit.

 

[Siikibam]

I made the liners for the cage when mine still lived indoors. I did a waterproof mattress protector sandwiched between two pieces of fleece. I didn’t use the underside (the one facing the waterproof side of the protector) but found it worked better that way than just fleece and then the waterproof on the other side. I can’t say exactly why though

I then later started using bath mats on top in the whole cage. The fleece could last a couple days longer that way.

With the girls, I did do just protector then fleece on top. This is because they liked to burrow! So I had to leave excess fleece around the liner that could be pinned onto the grids. I think that along with a fleece backing and protector would have been too much for the washing machine.

 

[Bill & Ted]

I make my own fleece pads and liners. I use a top layer of fleece followed by a layer of sheet Dacron polyester (like you get inside quilts but slightly thinner at 8oz) then a layer of white fleece and then another layer of fleece, four layers in all.
Never had a problem with dampness as the pee drains straight through the Dacron layer into the bottom layers and if you put newspaper underneath into that too.
Washes well and air dryed within a couple of hours

 

[Bertie & Jelly]

Like others I used a water resistant mattress protector (Teflon coated) sandwiched between 2 layers of fleece. Fleece, double thickness mattress protector, fleece. I’ve also used Zorb as the middle layer which is less bulky to sew and wash. I use newspaper underneath the liner. I also use pee pads made the same way in busy areas.

 

[piggieminder]

Squeak Dreams has a really good tutorial on Youtube for waterproof liners. There are also tutorials for other cage accessories.

 

[Aisling]

I just use towels for the absorbent layer and mattress protectors for the water proof layer.
you might want to use something more absorbent than towels for sleeping, eating or any other areas that your guinea pigs spend a lot of time in.
The most important thing is that make sure you wick the fleece first and make sure to make the liner slightly bigger than it needs to be it will likely shrink after the first few washes.

Hope this helps,